View to a kill
110 // JUNE 2018 #363 http://www.airforcesmonthly.comShort-range air-to-air missiles
he R-73 (AA-11 Archer) remains the
standard Russian close-air combat
missile and was developed together
with, and especially for, the MiG-29 and Su-27
fighters. Securing and delivering a successor
project, however, has so far proved elusive.
The Molniya (lightning) and Vympel (pennant)
missile design bureaux competed for the
original requirement in the latter half of the
1970s, with the former’s proposal being
preferred. The Molniya project was the more
technically challenging, using a combination
of aerodynamic surfaces and thrust-vector
control to provide the required manoeuvrability.
The R-73 was to be Molniya’s last air-to-air
missile (AAM) design. In April 1982, after the
design bureau was assigned to develop the
Buran space shuttle orbiter, a group of 300 missile
technologists from Molniya transferred to Vympel
to complete work on the R-73. The missile
entered production in 1982 and went into service
in late 1983. Production to date is likely to have
exceeded 50,000 missiles, including exports.
The R-73 has, and continues to be, the focus
of a handful of upgrade projects, in part because
of the lack of an available follow-on. As far
back as the 1980s the then Soviet Union began
to consider a successor as part of the AAM
inventory for the air force’s MFI fifth-generation
fighter programme. Known as the Vympel K-30
(izdeliye 300), the design was to be fitted with
a new imaging infrared (IIR) seeker enabling
target identification and aim-point selection. The
intended seeker would offer more than twice
the lock-on range and would be allied with a
more powerful double-pulse solid-propellant
motor and an all-moving nozzle for thrust-vectorIn the concluding part of their short-range
air-to-air missiles feature, Douglas Barrie
and Piotr Butowski assess the current
offerings from China, Israel, Japan, Russia
and South Africa.T
Below: The R-73 was
developed specifi cally
to arm the MiG-29 and Su-- It has a canard aerodynamic
confi guration with four cruciform
triangular fi ns on the forward part and four
trapezoidal wings installed around the engine.
Here, a quartet of ‘Archers’ awaits loading on
board Polish Air Force MiG-29s. Piotr Butowski